Saturday, 20 August 2016

The first part of this edition is for Bill W, you know who you are! It shows the construction, I use the term loosely of the farmhouse element of our model of La It'aint. As I said in an earlier posting we are not building an accurate representation of La Haye Sainte, it would be too big and need too many little plastic men to defend it.
Basically it is a large oblong made from foam board braced with balsa wood at the corners. The windows are intended for dolls houses and are obtainable at reasonable prices via Ebay. The doors and other wooden bits are from the stirrers used in Starbucks, other coffee retailers are available. The roof is thick card and balsa, "plastered" with household filler, and the "roof tiles" are from my old business cards, having recently retired this was a cathartic if long-winded exercise. There are around 2,500 on this roof, and the barn, which I have just started, will need even more, however my chequered career history means that I have plenty more to draw upon.

We feel it important that men are able to poke their rifles and firelocks through the windows so the first floor is just a couple of pieces of card glued to balsa supports which also allows access to the ground floor, as in the third picture. The dormer window is a dummy.
Hope all this makes sense, there is nothing difficult or complex going on here, it just needs a lot of time...........

Finally two pictures showing a fusilier company from a French line regiment, getting ready to attack the building once complete. They are converted from a number of sources and I have chosen to depict this regiment in campaign dress with covered shakos and other paraphernalia.

If you do drop by and read this nonsense, please say hello and where you are from and perhaps leave a comment.

Tuesday, 2 August 2016

A company from the Brunswick 1st Infantry Regiment, a company of Hanoverian light troops and a nearly complete regiment (the 2nd) of French dragoons, The regiment is finished but I took the photo's this afternoon which was wet and windy and the last few kept falling off the roof of my car, which is where the pictures are taken.

Painting has slowed down of late as we a rebuilding a representation of La Haye Sainte. This will be a sort of look similar model rather than an accurate replica.